


The Little Black Dress

by rainer76



Category: Fringe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-15
Updated: 2011-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-26 02:40:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia leaves Lincoln and Peter both staring, her body poured into an inky black dress that stops at mid-thigh.  Her laughter’s rich as she walks out of the lab, one arm looped through Astrid’s, their heads bent close together. Bewildered, Lincoln stares after them. “What was that?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Black Dress

**Author's Note:**

> I blame this story on monanotlisa and kerithwyn respectively, who both claim Lincoln is the little black dress of Fringe fandom, and really, who can ignore that kind of imagery?
> 
> Special thanks to kernezelda for pulling beta duties on this story, any remaining errors are entirely my own.

 

It comes to a head on a Tuesday.

Olivia leaves Lincoln and Peter staring, her body poured into an inky black dress that stops mid-thigh. Her face is made-up, the emphasis placed on Olivia’s lips, the cut of her cheekbones. Lincoln can see the delicate curve of her shoulder blade, body half turned in profile as she exchanges practical boots for high heels, balanced on one leg. Her laughter’s rich as she walks out of the lab, one arm looped through Astrid’s, their heads bent close together. Bewildered, Lincoln stares after them. “What was that?”

It’s a fair question; everyone has a change of clothing stashed at the lab for dire emergencies but Lincoln hadn’t realized it extended to evening wear.

“Olivia’s birthday,” Peter says. He’s sorting through Olivia’s mail one letter at a time, dismissing the bureau packages in favor of the smaller envelopes, his thumb pressing against the return address, voice absent. “Astrid’s been planning it for a while.”

“And I didn’t warrant an invitation?”

“You’re not packing the right equipment. It’s a girls’ night out.” Peter sets the envelopes aside and smirks at him, his eyes raking down Lincoln’s body insolently. “But if you want to go ahead, good luck squeezing into a dress.”

It looked like it was painted onto Olivia’s body, material binding tight across her breasts, hugging the subtle curves of her form. Lincoln wonders how constricting it felt, whether Olivia had to drag each breath in, the air so much sweeter for the effort. “And leave you alone?” Lincoln says curtly, not trusting him an inch.

Peter grins, slow as shark, and deliberately misinterprets. “I’m a cheap date, half a bottle and I’m good to go. Really, you don’t need to spend so much time with me.”

Lincoln answers in all seriousness, eyes wide. “Actually I’m studying profiling techniques: how to identify a wanker outside of his natural habitat. You’ve been a great help to me so far, thanks.”

And this is how it goes for them.

Peter’s shoulders twitch as he hides his grin, no longer thinking about the woman in the black dress or the unwrapped gift addressed to Olivia and placed surreptitiously on her desk. Lincoln wonders what it might have been - something small, not too personal, no jewelry or over-priced trinkets – left for her to find in the morning.

Lincoln has a moment of – irritation, unease? – because he honestly didn’t know it was Olivia’s birthday, buried nose-deep in his personal hunt for the shape shifters, and it’s too late to buy her something now, or even, in the back of his mind, is the question of whether he should.

How long does one need to know a person before extending thanks for their existence?

 

***

 

Olivia hugs him tight the next morning, her face glowing. Astrid slouches with Walter’s 3D glasses on her nose, head folded on her arms miserably. “Thank you,” Olivia whispers, and kisses Lincoln on the cheek, a barely there brush of displaced air. He would say ‘what for?’ but Olivia radiates happiness, lit up from the inside, her smile soft. “For the gift.”

Lincoln still has no idea what it was.

He finds evidence of the wrapping in the trash, the card placed upright on Olivia’s table. His own signature has been forged neatly on the bottom, right beside Walter and Peter’s. “Had a good night out then?” Lincoln asks thoughtfully.  He runs his fingers over the penmanship, turning the card over in his hand before returning it to the desk.

Astrid groans in agreement.

Olivia’s smile turns indulgent. “My favorite time of the year,” she confesses. Like the black dress, the gun on her hip, the austere suits and her buttoned up jackets, Olivia wears happiness well.

“I’m glad.”

Peter enters the lab with a clatter, kicking the door closed behind him. He trips down the stairs neatly and drops a takeaway bag beside Astrid’s head. “Greasy food.”

“Thank god,” Astrid murmurs.  She falls on the paper bag like it holds the million-dollar cure for all hangovers.

 

****

 

It comes to a head on a Tuesday.

If Lincoln’s hair weren’t flattened to his skull with gel, the first bullet would have given him a new parting. He drops to his knees in the muck, hears the sharp whine of a bullet pass _through_ the tree behind him, and decides that’s not playing fair, military grade weapons - the type of automatic rifle where fences, brickwork and trees do nothing to stop a bullet - is above his pay-grade.

Lincoln’s torso hits the dirt.  He rolls, fetching up against an abandoned oil drum, and yeah, this position is so much better.

He can see the ghost of Peter’s outline near the power-box, hunched over with the guts of a dozen wires bunched in his hand, blistering his fingers as he re-routes. Lincoln’s position is too exposed, but Peter isn’t qualified to handle weapons (he’s meant to be in the goddamn car) and Lincoln can’t risk him being sighted.

He pushes to his knees and squeezes off two rounds in quick succession, feels the kick back in his wrist and forearm.

The return fire chews up the earth to either side of him. He ducks. Unlike Lincoln, their quarry isn’t running blind in the dark.

At that exact moment the compound floodlights flare to life, turning the earth into a rocky moonscape of illumination. There’s a shouted curse of pain.

Lincoln pivots, blinking furiously as his eyes readjust.  He sees the shooter claw at his night-vision goggles, dashing them to the ground as he stumbles blind. Lincoln inhales, everything narrowed to the apex of his breathing, the microsecond of absolute stillness between the inhale and the exhale, then fires.

 

***

 

“Beer?” Peter asks Lincoln three hours later, stacked out across his lumpy couch that he requisitioned for his creepy house.

For the life of him, Lincoln can’t figure out why he chose the derelict, but Peter’s been putting the house back together ever since he was released from a prison cell. There are too many empty rooms, cobwebs stretched across the ceiling like the lines of an upside down highway. Peter presses a cold one into Lincoln’s hand, and knocks his legs out of the way as he sits down on the opposite end of a couch.

“I want a gun,” Peter says casually.

“Not by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin,” Lincoln retorts.

“I was being _shot_ at.”

“And you wouldn’t have been if you stayed in the car.” Peter doesn’t say a thing. Lincoln scrubs at his hair once and turns the bottle around in his hand. “Thank you,” he adds sincerely. “For _not_ staying in the car.” A smirk and a salute of the beer bottle is Lincoln’s only reply. “And you’re still not getting a gun.”

It turns out for once in his life Peter wasn’t lying.  He _is_ a cheap date, and Lincoln’s still too wired, his fingers clenching on an imaginary trigger, to find a kinder form of release. It’s not love, neither of them need that yet. Lincoln needs to destroy the shape-shifters who killed his partner and Peter…who knows what Peter needs…it’s not love, but it’s a distraction.  Cloaked in the messy sprawl of limbs, in the tentative touch of mouth against skin, it almost passes for affection.

Peter fucks him.

He’s contrary, his touch hard where Lincoln would prefer soft, gentle when Lincoln’s arching into more, wanting fierce and receiving ephemeral. He holds Lincoln down by his wrists, bruising tight, his stubble a sharp rasp against Lincoln’s throat, and melts into him as if there are no barriers, as if Lincoln’s home and hearth.

Lincoln gasps, hips on the edge of the couch, jeans tangled around one foot, one sock on, one off, shirt-tails skirting his erection. He’s bitten his bottom lip red, grinding down, trying to get a hand loose to jerk himself off. Peter’s eyes are closed, his face distant, terse with concentration.  “You can call me Olivia, if you want,” Lincoln says frustrated, trying for nasty. His voice dips unsteadily with each rocking thrust, hiccupping on a broken laugh. “I’ll even wear a little black dress if it helps.”

Peter’s eyes snap open.

He's no longer distant.  He’s very much present and accounted for.

The hands around his wrists tighten until Lincoln feels the tendons grind. Peter’s hips stutter, working in slow, methodical, stopping when he’s buried deep. The kiss is unexpected, lush and open, the sweet bow of lip, the playful greet of tongue. He spends long minutes breathing Lincoln’s air, speaking in a quiet, half-remembered dialect until Lincoln regrets ever mentioning her name.

Peter transfers his grip, using one hand to keep Lincoln’s wrists pinned, the other tightening around his cock, stroking in time with his tongue. Lincoln shakes one hand free and unbuttons his shirt, peeling it open, laying his chest bare. There’s a miniscule shift, a reminder that Peter’s still hard, buried deep, and still not moving nearly as much as Lincoln would like him too.  The hand on his cock is a skilful distraction, the skin rosy-red, flushed with pre-come.

“What type of dress?” Peter asks conversationally, and licks his own palm, dirty quick before squeezing the base of Lincoln’s cock.  Lee boggles at him, on the cusp of an orgasm that doesn’t follow through.

“Don’t stop,” he says urgently. “And…anything. A mini-skirt…or…a gown, long and sweeping.”

His eyes roll back in his head, the pressure perfect as Peter relents and jacks him, hips questing forward in a quick dart. They move in perfect synchronization until Lincoln feels it building like a freight train, his own breath gusting. His hands, now freed, wrap around the back of his knees, pulling his legs up and wide as the wings of a butterfly.  He’s there, Lincoln thinks, he’s right there.  

Peter shifts his grip low, fingers pinching with expert pressure into the folds of his scrotum, pulling his balls down and away from his body. Lincoln howls, the back of his head slamming into the cushions, body contorted, muscles gridlocked. His cock twitches frantically, dancing to its own tune as the orgasm recedes. “What color dress?” Peter asks, with thoughtful consideration.

“God, black, red, any, please,” Lincoln babbles.

“I like blue,” Peter says, sincerely.

Lincoln stares at him, sweat-slick and trembling. “So do I,” he rasps.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Peter says calmly, and licks a stripe down Lincoln’s cock, back bent like crooked hook. “Not without me.” And this time when Peter starts again, smooth, fluid as music, eyes locked on Lincoln, soaking up every twitch and moan, he tumbles them both over the edge.

A mini-dress, Lincoln decides dreamily, to show off his pert ass.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Space Among the Clouds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/278048) by [monanotlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/pseuds/monanotlisa)




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